


So You're the New Scary Hydra Baddy

by MollyC, riani1



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: AU, Randomness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-04 06:02:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5323247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MollyC/pseuds/MollyC, https://archiveofourown.org/users/riani1/pseuds/riani1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ward should have learned to make sure about who he's bragging around</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Over on Ravelry, we were looking at pictures of Sebastian Stan, I commented that some of them had a Grant Ward look about them and wondered about the Winter Soldier's reaction to Ward being all crazy villain. MollyC picked up the ball, I ran it down the field, we traded off, we have a sort of story.
> 
> Now with added credit for MollyC! And there will be more to come--stupid work that keeps distracting writers!

Ward liked Prague. Czech girls are hot and Czech men are violent; what’s not to like?

They took over a bar while they waited for his contact. Maybe they got there a couple hours early so they could wait in style, even; it was a little less Ward’s speed than it used to be but some of his boys needed to blow off steam. The bartender was a biggish guy, nervous, which was just how Ward liked him, though he seemed to still think he was going to get paid for putting up with this. The only remotely weird thing about him was that he was wearing a leather glove on his left hand.

Then Pietro said the word “Hydra” a little too loudly, and the bartender went absolutely rigid. Ward sighed, but he'd been more than half planning to kill the guy anyway. He locked eyes with him and gave him his best axe-crazy smile. And the bartender…came out from behind the bar. All Ward’s boys tensed. He deliberately didn’t.

This was not expected, but it might be fun.

“You’re with Hydra,” the guy said. He'd been speaking unaccented Czech before; this was American English.

“I _am_ Hydra,” Ward said, still grinning. “Why? You wanna join up?” Now that he looked a little more closely, the guy was vaguely familiar, something about the set of his shoulders, the musculature of his arms. He also was not moving like a civvie anymore. Might actually be worth keeping around, if he turned out not to be a total pussy. Ward spread his arms out. “We’re recruiting, if you can take the heat.”

“I don’t do that kind of thing anymore,” the bartender said, and looked down at his hands like he was admiring the contrast of gloved versus bare.

Ward made a show of a big, gusty sigh. ”I’m sorry to hear that. Sorry for _you_. If you're not gonna go all the way you really should have kept your mouth--”

The bartender pulled off his glove, and the hand underneath was metal, and when he went on his voice was flat, totally affectless. Ward had heard that voice before, in recordings, _If this voice gives you an order in the field, follow it_. “But for you, I’ll make an exception,” the Winter Soldier said.

 _Oh **shit**_ , Ward thought, and he was trained to function while panicking so he tried to push himself out of his chair but he could tell even as he started moving that it wasn’t fast enough.

* * *

May walked into Phil’s office, an irked look on her face. “It looks like neither of us is going to get what we want.”

“Like that’s new,” Phil said, sighing over his paperwork. “What this time?”

“Report from Prague. Ward’s dead.”

Phil had heard that before. “Proof?”

The report and pictures that hit his desk seemed kind of definitive. The body count was marked tentative, because they were still matching pieces up with each other. One of the big parts, though, had Ward’s head on it. He looked very surprised.

Still, in a world where Life Model Decoys were probably not theoretical, that wasn’t enough. “DNA?”

“We’re working on getting the, well, body. I’m going to go out personally.”

Phil nodded. “Good idea. We need to be sure.” He drummed his artificial fingers on the picture.

May humphed. ”I’ll admit I’m disappointed I didn’t get to kill him if you’ll admit it, too.”

He glanced up at her and quirked a very small smile. “Somebody beat me to him, dammit.”

* * *

It was a long flight to Prague, but she headed for the site as soon as she was down, arriving in time for the wrap-up to be in progress but not done yet.

The interior of the bar stank like a slaughterhouse and all the workers had masks on and looked spooked as hell. Melinda didn’t blame them. She had actually seen people torn limb from limb before, but never when there was no indication there’d been machines or animals used to do it.

The police officer in charge of the scene, who fortunately spoke good English, accepted her Interpol credentials without question and led her over to one of the gurneys. He unzipped the body bag--not very far, but far enough that she could tell Ward’s head and torso weren’t attached to anything much. Melinda resisted the urge to spit on the body. “That looks like our man,” she said. “Do you have any idea what might have happened?”

“Nothing yet,” the officer told her as he closed the bag. “We’re hoping to find bartender, ask him a few questions.”

Melinda’s eyes narrowed. “What’s this man’s name?”

“Yakov Yuryovich Baran, Russian, he lives in flat upstairs.” The officer made a face. “Lived, maybe. His body is not here, but not much left there. He may have run after…whatever happened.”

Melinda nodded, scanning the floor for lack of anything better to do. Near the pile of…parts that had not yet been assigned to bodies, she caught sight of a black leather glove, sopping with blood like almost everything else in here. None of the hands she could see had the other half of a pair of gloves, so: “Who’s that belong to?”

The officer shrugged. “According to owner, probably Baran. He wore it on his left hand. No one knows why.”

For some reason that detail, combined with the state of the bodies, made her worried. She huffed. Paranoia came with the job.

The medical examiners were whispering together anxiously, pointing out the wound sites to each other. Under the guise of studying the blood spatter, Melinda wandered closer. Her Czech was too rusty for her to use in conversation, so she settled for eavesdropping.

“It must have been a knife!” one of the examiners said.

“Too (messy?), too rough. Look. This was done by fingers.”

The first examiner shook her head quickly. Her reply was too full of colloquialisms, ie, swearing, to be clear, but she was not at all happy at the idea of someone using their bare hands to rip open a torso.

Melinda didn’t like it either, given the suspicions started to crowd around her. But, gosh, the look on Ward’s face when…whoever it was…pulled off the glove and revealed the truth of their reputation…

It was evil to smirk. She took herself outside before it got away from her, then fought herself under control to begin the subterfuge to redirect Ward’s body.

She dealt with the first round of paperwork before her wind ran out and she had to head for the hotel Phil had booked her. Even through the haze of fatigue, that smirk kept breaking though. Ward had finally hit someone he couldn’t weasel away from, and the fact that it hadn’t been her didn’t diminish her satisfaction much. Daisy…well, she couldn’t decide if Daisy was going to be happy or not; the girl’d hated him for playing her, but now that he was dead she might work up some retroactive sorrow.

She was deep in thought, but not so deep that she didn’t notice when something changed. You didn’t last in an organization like SHIELD if you couldn’t tell when you were being followed despite a three-day-bender hangover, a case of flu, and a sack over your head. Melinda tucked her chin and carefully didn’t speed up, stretching her senses to their limits and taking streets that were darker, quieter. Better to get this over with.

And it was still a complete surprise when someone dropped from fucking nowhere, clapped a hand over her mouth, and muttered, “Hail Hydra.”

 _Shit_. Melinda bucked against the grip, bent her knees to drop her center of gravity, and tried to flip the guy over her head. It should have worked; against her back he felt tall and the arm wrapped around her torso was hard with muscle, and that type didn’t tend to expect someone her weight to have any moves. But he swayed with her like they’d rehearsed it and when she jabbed her elbow back he twisted just enough to avoid a solid blow. He picked her off her feet like she weighed nothing, dragged her a few feet to the dark recess of a door, and spun her as he shoved her into it, planting his left hand in the center of her chest. _Shit_ , she thought again. Phil was going to be _pissed_ if she got herself killed out here.

He was a white guy, young-looking, dark hair shoved back out of his face. In the spill from the streetlamps she could only tell his eyes were light. Cute as hell, too. “Why are you fighting?” he growled into her face. “I know you’re with Hydra.” His accent was American, East Coast.

”I’m with SHIELD,” she spat.

He snorted. “Same thing.”

“No, it’s not,” she said, and feinted a knee to the groin. He didn’t bother dodging but shoved harder and she gasped, groping at his wrist to absolutely no effect.

“Stop it,” he said, studying her face intently. “You really believe that.”

“I believe it because it’s true,” Melinda told him.

He thought that over for what felt like a very long time, long enough for her to register that the hardness of his arm wasn't muscle; it felt like he was wearing plate armor under his long-sleeved hoodie. And the hand had a leather glove on it.

“Yakov Yuryovich, I presume,” Melinda said. “It’s been the equivalent of a formal introduction.”

He smiled, an unexpectedly charming smile. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Okay, SHIELD. Tell the Captain to stop looking.”

“What?”

“You heard me,” he said. “Close your eyes and count to ten.”

“You _cannot_ be serious,” she said.

He shrugged. She rolled her eyes and then closed them. “One,” she said, and the pressure of his hand on her sternum lifted. Melinda said, “Two. Three,” and then opened her eyes and bolted out of the recess. He was halfway up the fire escape of the building across the street and still climbing, and she had a snowball’s chance in _Hell_ of catching him. At the top he stopped, turned, and looked down, then deliberately peeled off his glove and gave her a little faux salute with a hand that gleamed like metal in the streetlight, and then stepped back to vanish behind the parapet.

" _Āi yā_ ,” Melinda breathed.

She didn’t relax until she was back on the plane--after searching the entire plane, checking every spot that could hold a body, peering at each and every crew member and looking at their ID and checking the roster, and opening all the body bags to confirm all contents had definitely shuffled off this mortal coil. Personally.

Scary reputation re-confirmed, she gave the order to take off and sat down at the comm station. “May to Director.”

“Director here. ID confirmed?”

“ID of one traitorous scumbag confirmed, status as human being of blood and bone and stuff confirmed, waiting on DNA.”

Phil’s image sighed, with mixed sadness and glee. “Well done, May. Status?”

“You want the good news, the bad news, or the weird news?”

Phil was a veteran. “Bad news.”

“The Winter Soldier made me.”

“Crap. Good news?”

“Is obvious, I’m a member of the very tiny club of people who he’s contacted and let live.”

“O...kay. And the weird news?”

“With some work we could probably convince him to sign that other set of trading cards you have.”


	2. Chapter 2

“I don’t know, May, it’s not like Yakov is an uncommon name.”

“Yakov Bar-n,” she said, swallowing the second vowel so it sounded like _Barn_. “Yakov, Jacob, James. James. Barn.”

“Don’t forget Yuryovich. His father’s name was George.” He picked up his glass and downed half of it. “But how could he have survived?”

“You worked with Captain America, I don't think you get to ask that question. All I can tell you is what I saw. I’d have put it together sooner, but…context. You know how it is.”

Phil shrugged. It could be hard as hell to recognize someone out of context, which was why Natasha was still managing to wander around undercover. “How many pictures of Bucky Barnes have you even seen?”

She stared at him. “I hang out with _you_ , Phil.”

”…fair.”

* * *

“Whuzzit?”

“Just my phone, Sam, I got it.”

“‘Kay.”

“This is Steve.”

”I’m Melinda, we’ve never met.”

“How did you get this number, Melinda?”

“A spider of our mutual acquaintance gave it to me. She told me to tell you ‘velveteen’.”

”…OK, if she’s giving out my number it’s probably important.”

“I have a message for you from a guy with a really mean left hook. _Really_ mean. Like iron, almost.”

” _What_?”

“He says, tell the Captain to stop looking. I’m passing on the message because he did me a favor, but I know what it’s like to miss someone, so I think you should know: it was in Prague, about 72 hours ago.”

“I…I don’t…”

“Coulson’s still trying to figure out how to tell you. I think you’re smart enough that after DC you already know.”

“Coulson?”

“Ooops. Good hunting, Steve.”

“No, just a second--damnit.”

“That sounded important.”

“It was. Pack up, we’re going to Prague.”

* * *

Given that Ward probably murdered what passed for his immediate family, Phil took it upon himself to decide on the disposition of the body--what they had of it. Prudence suggested he should put it on ice, because you never know when you might need DNA or proof of death or whatever. Pissed-off nastiness, though, figured Ward might appreciate going the way most of his family had, and so Phil organized some private time with a body bag and an industrial incinerator on the far side of town from his base.

He wasn’t stupid, though, he took Hunter with him. Too bad the only warning Hunter gave was when he hit the floor.

“So you’re the new Director of SHIELD,” said the voice from the shadows. “How many heads will rise when I cut yours off?”

Phil didn’t turn around, kept gazing into the flames and mulled over that weird fanboy glee that squealed “OMG, it’s Bucky Barnes!”

He looked over far enough at Hunter to confirm the man was still breathing. “Thank you for not killing him.”

“That’s your one freebie.” The voice was closer, with no sound of movement. “Who’s in the bodybag?”

“Ah, yes. One of the men you killed in Prague was a former member of my team who turned out to be a Hydra mole. He’d been claiming to be the new head of Hydra, bringing it into a new age.”

“Oh, him. He was nuts.”

“Yes, he was. Some of us are kind of annoyed that you got to him before we did.”

“Were you wanting to rehabilitate him? Remake him? Bring him back into the fold?” The voice was closer, and Phil’s trained senses told him there was someone right behind.

Impulses that had made him grab a big-assed gun and go taunt a god made Phil turn around at stare the Winter Soldier in the eye. “No, Sergeant Barnes, we wanted to kill him ourselves.”


	3. Chapter 3

Fury had told Phil everything he knew about the relationship between the Winter Soldier and Bucky Barnes. Steve Rogers had not been particularly forthcoming about his deductions, but Natasha had filled lots of holes. The world tour Rogers had been conducting with Sam Wilson in tow was not particularly low-key. It was kind of cruel of May to point Rogers at Prague when any proper spy could tell you the Winter Soldier would be long gone. And in fact, he was right here.

Barnes didn't look that much different than he did in the footage from SHIELD's fall: He still had the long hair and the terrifying eyes, but the emptiness was gone. Still, having a relentless killing machine being self-directed rather than a mere tool was not much of a comfort to the target. Phil, though, had faced implacable death before without blinking--though he wished he'd put on a suit.

The Soldier glowered menacingly, but Phil only gazed back with his best "Yes, I see you have four hundred heavily armed bloodthirsty killers backing you up. Your point?" neutral expression.

Barnes tilted his head. "You do know who I am, right?"

"Naturally. James Buchanan 'Bucky' Barnes, Sergeant of the 107th and the Howling Commandos. Steve Rogers' best friend." He shrugged slightly. "And yes, I am well aware that you're also known as the Winter Soldier."

Barnes blinked at him, then slowly pulled the glove off his left hand. The metal glinted in the firelight. "I killed the last Director of your organization."

Phil smiled, though no one who didn't know him well would have seen it. "Yes, I know. Forgive me for not thanking you for my promotion."

"The woman wasn't afraid of me, either." He was beginning to sound a little miffed.

"May? No, you worried her, but she wasn't frightened. The only people who frighten her are her parents, and having met them, I agree with her." Phil settled his footing, just in case he did have to move. "Are you here to kill me too, Sgt. Barnes?"

"No one's asked me to," Barnes said thoughtfully. "I cut off Hydra heads when I find them, though. But I suppose you'll say you're not Hydra."

"No," Phil said firmly, "I am not."

"Is that why you're not afraid of me?"

Phil thought a moment. "Really, I haven't been afraid of much, since Loki killed me."

"Um . . . what?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, did you miss it?. Norse gods, alien invasion of New York a couple of years ago, the Avengers coming together to save the world? I'm told it was very exciting, but I was dead through most of it." He frowned at the confusion on Barnes' face. Rumor suggested the Winter Soldier was locked away between his missions, away from the world and the passage of time. If he was having a hard time remembering Steve Rogers, it might be a little cruel to throw aliens at him, as well.

Barnes eased away a little. "What did they use on you, to keep you alive?"

"Alien technology and highly ill-advised medical experimentation that I explicitly advised be discontinued. It was only supposed to be used in the greatest of need."

_"Exactly," Fury said with great satisfaction._

Barnes looked Phil over carefully, suspiciously, and his study came to a stop at the glove on Phil's left hand.

"Oh, uh . . . huh." Phil felt himself blushing. He hesitated, then pulled his glove off. "I guess we sort of match." He flexed his shiny fingers in the red light. "I grabbed hold of an alien crystal, my arm was turning to stone, there was a whole chopping off my hand to save my life thing. But it's not really like yours. Mine comes off. I may put a laser in it, people keep saying I should do that." He finally wrestled control back on his tongue. "And I'm very sorry. I babbled when I met Captain Rogers, too."

He was very afraid the Winter Soldier was laughing at him.

After a moment, Phil went on, “So what are we doing now, Sergeant? I admit I’d prefer you not kill me. I have projects in the works.”

The amusement dropped away from Barnes’ face like a stone. “What kind of projects does SHIELD work on these days?”

Phil’s wince didn’t show on his face, but it was perfectly legitimate for this man to suspect his motives. “You remember that alien technology I mentioned?” Barnes didn’t nod, or make a face, or _anything_ , and in his heart of hearts Phil had to admit it was a little creepy. “It or something related to it has gotten loose. It’s affecting people…unpredictably. Some of them are at serious risk of hurting themselves, or their loved ones. We’re trying to find them first.” He paused. “And one of my people is missing, and I’m very worried about her.” Not to mention about Leo, who was sleeping an average of four hours out of thirty-six in his quest to find Gemma.

“And what do you want from me?” That wasn’t Sergeant Barnes’ voice; that was the Winter Soldier, through and through. (He felt a thrill entirely independent of the joy of _actually meeting Bucky Barnes OMG:_ here he was, confirming that the Winter Soldier was a real person. It was a coup countless members of his profession would have literally killed for.) Phil forced his mind back to the present and shrugged. “Nothing, Sergeant. Your skills would be valuable--”

“You mean killing people?”

“Sometimes, yes,” Phil said frankly. ”I’m running a spy organization, not a kindergarten. If I’d had anyone equipped to take Ward out with a half-mile sniper shot—" Clint had told him to stop calling, damn it, not relevant right now "—he wouldn’t have lived long enough for you to kill him. But I’m not interested in forcing you to do anything.”

Now an expression did cross Barnes’ face: extreme skepticism. “You’re just going to let the Winter Soldier walk away from you—Director?”

Phil smiled. “I don’t think I can stop you, Sergeant. I could probably kill you if I were willing to throw all my resources at you—even for you it would only take one bullet. But I can’t make you happy to work for me, and anything less isn’t worth my time.”

“You could make me happy, though,” Barnes said, stepping closer again. “You have the chair.” Phil heard a quiet whir and rattle and realized with a start that it was the plates in the man’s metal arm.

“That thing was an abomination and has been destroyed,” Phil said flatly.

And finally, he managed to _surprise_ Bucky Barnes, surprise and then a huge relief that made Phil want to cry for the moment that it flashed across the man’s face. “Why would you do that?”

Phil sighed. “Because I don’t believe in changing anyone’s mind any way other than talking to them, Sergeant Barnes.”

At his side, Hunter stirred. Phil glanced down at him; when he looked back up, Barnes was gone. Phil called, “There’s cash in the back seat of my car if you need it,” and crouched to put a hand on Hunter’s shoulder.


	4. Beneath the Snow

It was stupid and sentimental, but Rogers' dossier hadn't indicated that he'd picked up Russian yet; besides, if the pursuit got close enough to know an identity's name while he was still using it, he'd have bigger problems. So when the paper merchant asked if he had a preference, he said, "Yakov Yuryovich Baran," and trusted that anyone who'd be likely to translate that into _James son of George_ for Rogers was busy dealing with her own problems.

* * *

He didn't like Prague, for reasons he couldn't clearly define; he suspected he'd killed someone there in an unusually brutal way. Unfortunately it wasn't practical to avoid places on the basis of having killed people in them, and at least it would break any pattern he had of choosing cities Rogers might know he liked. He thought he'd just leave Europe when Rogers got too close the next time. Break the pattern entirely, go somewhere that a white man would stand out, play tourist or visiting businessman for a while.

He got a job tending bar. It was a relatively respectable bar, even though it wasn't in a great neighborhood. The pay wasn't much but the perks of the job included a two-room apartment in the building. Yakov put a Russian accent into his Czech, and ignored direct questions but dropped enough hints to give the impression that he wore the glove to cover unsightly burn scars.

He was about halfway through the lifetime of the identity when a group of men came into the bar in the late afternoon and settled down at tables. Yakov eyed them, went out back, and told Nadia she should go home when she was done with her cigarette. The customers weren't anyone he wanted a pretty civilian woman around and if Malkin got unhappy about it, Yakov could afford to cover her pay.

Over the course of half an hour or so, more men filtered in until the place was nearly full. The last group included the man who was in charge; it wasn't overt but everyone else's body language deferred to him. He was good-looking, dark haired, and American, and Yakov didn't like his eyes: a man who didn't just kill, but enjoyed killing.

It was obvious that the dark-haired man didn't intend to pay for his thugs' drinking; what Yakov wasn't sure of was whether he was going to have to take a beating before they left. That kind of thing was dangerous because it was too easy for them to discover the metal arm. He concentrated on looking nervous, hunching his shoulders and startling when one of them shouted at him. The afternoon wore into evening and Yakov decided they were waiting for someone; the dark-haired man had let them come early to party while they waited.

He kept an ear on the conversation, which was mostly in English. The dark-haired man had a hate on for someone called Coulson. They weren't mafiya, but they managed to be allusive enough about what they were up to that Yakov could pretend until one of the Italians hailed Hydra too loudly for even a bartender to ignore. Yakov let himself freeze and looked up to meet the dark-haired man's gaze. As soon as he did, the man smiled at him, an expression impossible to mistake for anything but a threat.

Yakov set down the mug he'd been filling and walked out from behind the bar. The dark-haired man concealed his surprise well and didn't tense, though all his thugs did. Yakov took a position that was perfectly reasonable for talking and also just happened to provide a great deal of tactical flexibility, and switched to English. "You're with Hydra."

The dark-haired man leaned back in his chair, still smiling. "I _am_ Hydra," he said, and Yakov wanted to laugh in his face. The man had 'field agent' written all over him; he was hardly equipped to lead an organization like Hydra. But apparently the fall of SHIELD had given a lot of small men big ideas. "Why? You wanna join up?" His eyes flicked over Yakov's body, assessing, and he spread out his arms in invitation. "We're recruiting, if you can take the heat."

Yakov looked down at his hands. He'd known from the instant he heard the word that they had to die, but recruiting meant they had to die messy. "I don't do that kind of thing anymore," he said.

The dark-haired man sighed theatrically and said, "I’m sorry to hear that. Sorry for _you_. If you're not gonna go all the way you really should have kept your mouth—"

Yakov pulled off his glove and the dark-haired man's eyes widened. 

"But for you, I'll make an exception," said the Asset, and he saw the moment the man realized what was going to happen.

The Asset had to give him this: he was pretty good. He lasted almost a minute.

* * *

He stripped out of his bloody clothes behind the bar, shoved them in a trash bag for later disposal, and wiped his feet and hands at the sink. His glove had gotten lost in the melee and there was no point in searching for it; it wasn't like it would have DNA of his on it in any useful amount. Then he hurried up to his apartment to wash fast and thorough, redress, and pack the few things that didn't live in his bag, and went out the window. From the roof across the street he watched the first police officers arrive.

* * *

He was in the middle of a ration bar from his bag when the inevitable showed up, in the form of a female agent. She didn't cause any feeling of familiarity, which meant she hadn't been on any of the teams he'd worked with, but she moved like she could have been. She met the officer in charge of the cleanup at the door and went inside. He had time to finish his bar before she came out; he noted sourly that she was smirking, though she suppressed it quickly.

He followed her to the police station and waited some more while she spent several hours on paperwork; by the time she came out, dusk had fallen. She noticed him following with commendable speed and chose a less-trafficked route. He smiled and picked up his pace; if a dame was going to give him an engraved invitation, who was he to refuse?

He dropped on her from a windowsill, wrapped the metal arm around her, and covered her mouth with his flesh hand. She tensed, of course, and he murmured "Hail Hydra." Might as well get a few leads before he killed her. But at the words she twisted in his hands and tried to flip him, and it would have worked on someone who didn't expect competence from a woman; then she threw back an elbow, which was actually a little tricky to dodge. He rolled his eyes. Naturally he got an agent who knew what she was doing; he wondered why someone this good was on clean-up duty. No doubt she'd pissed someone off.

He picked her up and got them out of the middle of the narrow street into a recess, putting her back against the door and the metal hand into the center of her chest. "Why are you fighting?" he demanded in the Asset's flat growl. "I know you're with Hydra."

She glared at him. "I'm with SHIELD," she said with angry conviction.

Rolling his eyes didn't fit the persona, but he let himself snort. "Same thing."

"No it's not," she said, and feinted a knee to his groin to give herself an opening. He shoved a little harder, studying her face as she grabbed the wrist.

"Stop it," he said absently. She kept glaring. He wondered if she'd worked out who he was yet; all the Hydra field agents were taught to recognize him, just in case. It seemed unlikely, since she wasn't in a sweating panic, and besides... "You really believe that," he said. 

"I believe it because it's true," she said.

He let up the pressure on her sternum just a bit while he thought it over. SHIELD hadn't been _completely_ dirty, and he'd heard rumors of a few actions that could have been some remnant, trying to hold itself together in the wake of Rogers' exposé. 

Finally she said, "Yakov Yuryovich, I presume." She flicked her eyes at the metal hand, covered in its glove. "It's been the equivalent of a formal introduction."

Unless she was better than the Widow, she didn't know who he was, and that decided him. He gave her the Brooklyn smile and said, "Yes, ma'am. OK, SHIELD: tell the Captain to stop looking." He hadn't ever told Rogers directly to leave him alone; there was the slightest, smallest possibility that knowing he wasn't welcome would give Rogers pause. 

A fugitive can dream, right?

"What?" the SHIELD agent said.

"You heard me. Close your eyes and count to ten."

She gave him an utterly unimpressed look and said, "You _cannot_ be serious."

He shrugged. After a second she rolled her eyes, closed them, and said, "One."

He stepped back and launched himself across the street, climbing as fast as he could. "Two, three," she said, and then he heard her feet on the pavement as she ran out after him. But she didn't start climbing herself, which raised his assessment of her another notch; she'd realized she couldn't catch him. When he hit the roof he turned and looked down. She was staring, so he pulled off his glove and touched the first two metal fingers to his forehead in salute.

* * *

Wherever she'd been heading, after their talk she went straight back to her plane, a vehicle that defied every piece of advice about being inconspicuous he'd ever encountered, and proceeded to go on a rampage that netted him her name ('May'), her boss' name ('Coulson', interesting) and her destination. Her flight crew called her the Cavalry, which he suspected was a nickname she didn't like because they only used it out of her earshot. But she checked the plane thoroughly enough that he decided it would be more trouble than it was worth to stow away on it. Getting back to the States on his own wouldn't be difficult.

* * *

SHIELD's new HQ was kind of a come-down from the Triskelion, most of it underground in a light commercial district. He watched for several days until he caught the rhythms of Coulson's arrivals and departures. The man was middle-aged and balding, and wore suits like a desk jockey, but he carried himself well; it would be most efficient to simply shoot him from a distance, but not before he talked.

Then one evening, Coulson left the garage off-schedule in a nondescript van. Following was simple enough. Coulson drove to a down-on-its-luck industrial building on the far side of town, where he and another agent (skinny, not tall, looked like he could take a punch as well as give one) unloaded a body bag. Interesting.

The incinerator was roaring when they laid the bag down near it. He fired, counting on the sound of the flames to cover the slight noise, and the skinny agent went down gracefully with a dart in his neck. Coulson froze where he stood and didn't turn.

"So you're the new Director of SHIELD." He pitched his voice so it would seem to come from everywhere. "How many heads will rise when I cut yours off?"

Coulson threw a glance at his man and said, "Thank you for not killing him."

Mildly surprised, he moved closer. "That's your one freebie. Who's in the bodybag?" He was fairly sure he knew, but he wanted to see what Coulson would say.

"Ah, yes," Coulson said, still calm. "One of the men you killed in Prague was a former member of my team who turned out to be a Hydra mole. He'd been claiming to be the new head of Hydra, bringing it into a new age."

"Oh, him." Closer now, at the man's back. "He was nuts."

"Yes, he was. Some of us are kind of annoyed that you got to him before we did."

His heart clenched and it made his voice tighter than it should have been. "Were you wanting to rehabilitate him? Remake him? Bring him back into the fold?" Anyone could be remade. Anyone could be unmade.

Coulson turned suddenly, and didn't seem intimidated when their eyes met—it was enough to make him wonder if he was losing his touch. "No, Sergeant Barnes," he said calmly. "We wanted to kill him ourselves." 

Coulson thought he was Rogers' 'Bucky'. "You do know who I am, right?" It didn't seem possible that the director of SHIELD, no matter how reduced, wouldn't know that much.

"Naturally. James Buchanan 'Bucky' Barnes, Sergeant of the 107th and the Howling Commandos. Steve Rogers' best friend." Obviously, May hadn't told her boss every— "And yes, I am well aware that you're also known as the Winter Soldier."

He blinked. Maybe it was time to be a little clearer. He stripped the glove from the metal hand and said, "I killed the last director of your organization."

Coulson's shoulder's shifted minutely. He knew something. "Yes, I know. Forgive me for not thanking you for my promotion." He _still_ wasn't nervous enough. Wary, but not frightened. Perhaps he'd accepted that there was nothing he could do; it took some people like that.

Exasperated, he said, "The woman wasn't afraid of me either."

"May? No, you worried her, but she wasn't frightened. The only people who frighten her are her parents, and having met them, I agree with her." Coulson's weight shifted, settling himself to be able to move, as if that would help. "Are you here to kill me too, Sergeant Barnes?"

He suppressed his wince at the name. Hadn't he been using it? Casually, he said, "No one's asked me to." Or ordered him to, more to the point. "I cut off Hydra heads when I find them, though. But I suppose you'll say you're not Hydra."

"No, I am not," Coulson said, with the same defiant firmness Agent May had used. It was very tempting to believe him.

"Is that why you're not afraid of me?"

"Really, I haven't been afraid of much since Loki killed me," Coulson said thoughtfully.

Now hang on just a second. "Um...what?" he said, mildly annoyed with himself for showing surprise.

"Oh, I'm sorry, did you miss it?" Coulson asked him. He didn't bother to answer; Coulson knew about the Winter Soldier, he'd work it out. "Norse gods, alien invasion of New York a couple of years ago, the Avengers coming together to save the world? I'm told it was very exciting, but I was dead through most of it."

He did not quite manage to stop himself before he swayed away. 'Dead through most of it' meant it wasn't a matter of medtechs having restarted his heart after eight seconds or something equally trivial. "What did they use on you, to keep you alive?" His voice stayed steady, at least.

"Alien technology and highly ill-advised medical experimentation that I explicitly advised be discontinued," Coulson said. He sounded unhappy about it, and faintly incredulous. "It was only supposed to be used in the greatest of need." He didn't think he'd deserved to be saved. Wasn't that interesting. 

He looked Coulson over—he had a few more minutes yet before the unconscious agent would begin to wake. The director's body language was as open as it probably ever got. At this distance it was hard to miss that his left hand was a prosthetic, and Coulson saw him looking. "Oh, uh...huh. I guess we sort of match," Coulson said, pulling the glove off and flexing the artificial fingers. It was fairly impressive, if not as complex as the metal arm. "I grabbed hold of an alien crystal, my arm was turning to stone, there was a whole chopping off my hand to save my life thing. But it's not really like yours. Mine comes off. I may put a laser in it, people keep saying I should do that." There was a brief pause while Coulson made a face that was probably his equivalent of utter mortification. "And I'm very sorry. I babbled when I met Captain Rogers, too." Picturing Rogers confronted with a Captain America fan was certainly amusing, but then Coulson went on, "So what are we doing now, Sergeant? I admit I’d prefer you not kill me. I have projects in the works."

Amusement fell away and he asked softly, "What kind of projects does SHIELD work on these days?"

"You remember that alien technology I mentioned?” He didn't react, and Coulson didn't wait for long. “It or something related to it has gotten loose. It’s affecting people…unpredictably. Some of them are at serious risk of hurting themselves, or their loved ones. We’re trying to find them first.” Coulson paused, and then said more quietly, “And one of my people is missing, and I’m very worried about her."

He would have bet a lot that Coulson's concern was sincere, but that didn't prove as much as it might have; even Hydra agents were capable of caring about individuals. The key question was, "And what do you want from me?" He didn't try to sound like the boy from Brooklyn, nor even Yakov Yuryovich.

"Nothing, Sergeant," Coulson said. "Your skills would be valuable—"

Ah, there it was. "You mean killing people?" Damned if he was going to let Coulson hide behind euphemism.

But Coulson shrugged and said, "Sometimes, yes. I’m running a spy organization, not a kindergarten. If I’d had anyone equipped to take Ward out with a half-mile sniper shot, he wouldn’t have lived long enough for you to kill him." Something about that statement seemed to pain the man. "But I’m not interested in forcing you to do anything."

He didn't try to hide his incredulity, even as he decided Coulson had earned a painless death with that answer. But no intelligence agent in the world would be happy to let the Asset slip through their fingers. "You're just going to let the Winter Soldier walk away from you—Director?"

Coulson gave him a look that was disconcertingly understanding, even kind, and smiled. "I don’t think I can stop you, Sergeant. I could probably kill you if I were willing to throw all my resources at you—even for you it would only take one bullet. But I can’t make you happy to work for me, and anything less isn’t worth my time."

He wondered if Coulson realized the threat in those words, and took a step closer. "You could make me happy, though." Without his volition the metal arm shifted configuration, but he hoped Coulson would see that as a threat rather than evidence of the cold fear that gripped him. "You have the chair." They had to; if they were claiming the remnants of SHIELD, they'd have Hydra's movable assets as well.

The man's chin came up. "That thing was an abomination and has been destroyed," he said.

He wondered if he could believe it even as relief hit him like a sandbag. "Why would you do that?"

Coulson sighed and said, "Because I don't believe in changing anyone’s mind any way other than talking to them, Sergeant Barnes."

And maybe he was a fool, just as stupid as Rogers had ever jokingly told him he was, but he _did_ believe it, and he decided that he wasn't going to kill Phillip Coulson after all.

He was saved from having to think of a response by the drugged agent, who chose that moment to begin to wake. He slipped out of Coulson's sight as soon as his attention was diverted. Behind him, Coulson called, "There's cash in the back seat of my car if you need it."

He didn't reply, though he found it interesting that Coulson had been prepared even to that extent for him to show up.

* * *

By morning, he was on an international flight.


End file.
